Going Nomad |
Photo credit: Social Butterfly at Pixabay I have, since I thought of this crazy idea to swim across the Ijsselmeer back in September of last year, I worked with Chris Chalmers in Issaquah. Chris is an extremely experienced coach and I feel lucky to have had a chance to work with him. Closer to home I worked with Teresa Seibel from tri-balance, also an extremely experienced and fun coach to work with. Most likely I will book one final session with my coaches to strategize for bad weather (I only have a strategy for good conditions), but for now I'm on me own … The winter is long and swimming indoors is getting to me; it is becoming tougher to muster up the motivation day after day (the underwater MP3 only helped when it was still a novelty). But … I have my support team for the Ijsselmeer swim, and while there is some 8000 km between me and them, they help, even from that distance. Since I figure that I will have to get in touch with my inner superhero, I bought a Superwoman bathing suit for the 22km long swim and sent my support team a photo of said suit on WhatsApp. I immediately got a text back suggesting that the team cannot lag behind, and so one (female) support person suggested she'd arrive as Superman, one (male) as Mega Mindy (I had never heard of her, must be a European thing), a third (also male) will join me as Superwoman, and the last member, my son, will be Spiderman. So yeah. As I will harness my own inner Superwoman, my team will harness their (gender-bending) superheroes as they support me on my epic swim. Spent some time at this urban forest as it is called in search of a good shot (photo contest), but was a little disappointed. It looks better on the Internet than in reality, perhaps because the time of year. I walked the trails till the end (it's fairly small forest), trying to get to where the sun rose up, leaving a nice light on the trees, only to find out when getting closer that there was a housing complex right there, so I was unable to capture the light as I had hoped. Came away with four pics but none appear worthy of submission. I cut my losses, and with still a little time to spare (I was going to have lunch with my son), I went back to my new favourite, Redwood Park, this time with my camera, to take a few better photos of the fairy forest (uploaded since). As for Sunnyside, perhaps I will try once more in spring to see if I can snap one worthy of sending in...
Yesterday I left for Cloverdale with an hour to spare, with the intention to stop at Redwood Park, just a stone throw away from Kai's worksite. This park is a 'living memorial,' as one of the park signs reads, to twin brothers Peter and David Brown, sons of one of Surrey's earliest pioneer families. When they turned 21, they both inherited 21 acres of freshly logged land, ready for farming. However, they loved trees and decided to, instead of farming, plant all sort of trees, from Asian, to European, and North-American species including the California Redwoods after which the park is named. They lived in a tree house, a replica of which stands in the park today. In additional to the gorgeous trails and majestic trees (many of which are labelled to indicate their species and origins) there is a 'fairy forest.' I read that there were some 'original' fairy entrances, most of which were vandalized after which the local community started bringing their own. Now the fairy forest stands strong with what appears to be hundreds of whimsical, brightly coloured and decorated fairy houses. I love the park, love the stories connected to it, and love that we can still find these unexpected and folkloristic gems. If you are ever in the hood, well worth a visit. I will be back in April, when they have (free!) guided bird tours here. When I left, I walked by a bulletin board that displayed, among other things, a photo contest poster, photos to be made in another park near Kai's worksite. Challenge accepted. So today I came to Cloverdale with my camera. Sunnyside Acres Urban Forest here I come...
Vancouver has been in the grips of winter this past week. Cold temperatures, heaps of snow, black ice, we had it all. The cold we could handle, but the enormous amount of snow did us in. Traffic was complete mayhem with semis jackknifed or in ditches, cars stranded and abandoned, traffic jams, closed bridges and freeways, and limited public transit, in part due to frozen doors. Vancouverites were urged to stay home. This would have been nice, but mommy duties kicked in for me. Kai worked this particular week close to the border, in a small community called Cloverdale, which was initially a small farm community and which has been the site for a bunch of movies and tv shows, including Smallville, a super-hero tv series. There is no way of getting to Cloverdale by public transit (or at least not that I know of), and given that Kai does not drive yet, I made transport my task for the week. I got up at 4:45 each day to brave the snowy and icy roads and do the same at the end of the day. So a busy, eventful, and white-knuckle week for me. Closer to home, our doggos were happy with the snow (old blind boy who brings the teddy bear he got from Santa everywhere on a stroll in the snow below), although this came with challenges also, especially for Gary. Unlike my other dogs, Gary has very bare feet; no fur. So those footsies of his got pretty cold but worse was the salt on the sidewalks, which cut and burned his skin. So we stayed off the sidewalks, but there was a downside to that also. As the days went by, the snow piled so high that his belly, and by extension his penis, would be below or on the snow's surface. Then Gary would every once and again lift a leg to give his penis a short break from the cold. At the end of summer 2019, I decided to take a break from marathons and triathlons and instead go for a swim in 2020. By mid-September I was working with a coach for "a few pointers" which turned into a complete overhaul of my freestyle stroke. Turns out ideas about efficient swimming had changed in the 20+ years since I first learned to swim freestyle in earnest, which was when I was at what was at the time called the "sport akademie"). Since then, I have learned a lot about swimming. Turns out, there are two camps, two philosophies, on swimming. The camp I stumbled into by randomly picking a coach without even knowing about said camps is called full immersion. This camp believes in swimming with the entire body, engaging the core, hips, back; not just the shoulders. Proponents tend to talk metaphor: "swim downhill", "swim through the tunnel", "patient lead arm", "swim quietly" are just a few. I also changed my kick from a flutter-kick to the so-called two beat kick, which is, I've been told, the way to go in choppy waters. I gave myself till Christmas to relearn and perfect my freestyle stroke as much as possible. Now that the new year has arrived, it's time to swim more, longer, with more intervals and also to start strategizing for my three 2020 swims, which are, in chronological order, the Skaha Lake ultra swim (11.8km), then the Ijsselmeer crossing (22km), and then in the fall, the Alcatraz to San Francisco swim (a mere 3km but the waters are cold, choppy and there are sharks, so there's that). To help fight boredom (inevitable in the pool), I bought an underwater MP3 player, so I am rocking it out in the pool to Passenger and Meatloaf (bucket list item to sing this in a Karaoke bar; always been my pick-me-up song when getting tired in marathons or triathlons, so know it inside out. Can do both voices too.) My main challenge is, of course, the Ijsselmeer swim. I have, however, a terrific support team for that swim, even though all members initially questioned my mental state with one person texting me back after reading my request, "Dearest Gerda. Have you gone mad?" Just after Christmas, I went to Europe with a friend. She sent me a text while I was at the grocery store, saying "would you like to go to Czech Republic around Christmas to watch the Canadians play [ice] hockey in the world championships?" I replied "sure." And so we did. One of my favourite baristas at my local coffee shop asked for a few stones from my trip. I collected five, and here are their stories. The first pebble comes from the Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery. Most people buried here were Canadians (2339 Canadian graves), and in the entrance to the cemetery is a memorial wall that commemorates the names of 1047 missing men, 942 British, 102 Canadians, two South Africans, and one British airman. In front of the graves stands the 'Stone of Remembrance' with the text: 'Their Name Liveth For Evermore'.. The second pebble is from Prague, Czech Republic, where I met St. John of Nepomuk. The story goes that he was thrown into the river Vltava after refusing to speak during an interrogation that was ordered by King Wenceslas IV, perhaps because the king was curious about the confessional secrets of the King’s wife Sophie (which she had shared with John of Nepomuk). After he refused to speak, he was tossed over the bridge and plunged to his death (although it was later revealed that he had been hit on the head before being tossed over), and his statue is located where he was thrown into the river. It is said that when his body surfaced, five starts appeared around his face, and this is how his statue is portrayed on the Charles River. St. John of Nepomuk is now the patron saint of all things water and as such, I touched the base of the statue for good luck as I prepare to swim Skaha lake in British Columbia, the largest lake in the Netherlands, called Ijsselmeer, and from Alcatraz to San Fran. The third is from the Old Town Square in Prague, Czech Republic. This picture shows one of 27 crosses that are incorporated in the pavement to commemorate 27 lords and citizens who had been part of the Czech uprising (1618-1620) against the then ruling Habsburg dynasty. The nonconformists were defeated and 27 anti-Habsburg leaders were publicly executed. Pebble #4 comes from Ostrava, where we went to cheer on the Canadians in the 2020 Junior World Hockey Tournament. The atmosphere was incredible ($2 pints helped) and there appeared to be more Canadians in the arena than opposing team fans. The fifth and final one is from a terrain that holds two dolmens, or hunnebedden. These prehistoric graves (5000+ years old), built by peasant tribes, are found only in the northern province of Drenthe. The graves are made with enormously large stones (up to 40 tons each) that were brought here in the ice age. Fifty-four of these graves still exist.
Now that normalcy has (somewhat) returned, I am making plans. Not for marathons and also not for triathlons. I'm going for a swim. There are already a few 2020 swims on my wish list, Skaha Lake Ultra being one of them (12km) and also the Portland Bridge swim (17km) but I am hoping to do at least one epic one. Perhaps the Ijselmeer Marathon (22km), the biggest water crossing in The Netherlands. This lake used to be sea but turned into a lake after the Dutch damned it. This swim looks tough to get into, especially for foreigners but we'll see. Or I might try Lake Tahoe marathon, which is just under 35 kilometre (there are three routes, but I'd go for the longest. Go big or go home...). Lake Tahoe is a no wet-suit swim though, yet the lake is glacier fed, and I am not sure if my skinny bones can handle that (on average this swim takes 10-20 hours) but I am planning on swimming outdoors throughout winter to get more comfortable in cold waters (best way to prepare for cold water swimming is cold water swimming!). For now I am happy to have a new goal, new plans, and options. Since making this decision, I have been in the lake everyday, even though the days are getting darker and colder. Sometimes my friend and her two dogs, Louie and Jack, join me on her paddle board, which is awesome. I keep a log to look back on as I go. More on my swims will follow in the weeks to come... I was registered with The Best in the West Triathlon Festival for last weekend for the half iron but was recently diagnosed with bradycardia, a condition where your resting heart is so low (in my case below 40 beats per minute) that any exercise can lead to cardiac arrest, so that was that for the half iron. Asking my doctor how she felt about it if I paired all the way down to a sprint, she said "sure, if you have a death wish." Which I don't so that was that. But my friend and I had planned it, plus I badly needed a break from an intense home improvement project so we decided to go after all. Bend Oregon was our first stop. Awesome place, dog capital of Oregon. Here we tasted wine, hiked, and shopped all things dog. From there a visit to Sisters (big disappointment, don't let the Internet fool you. I'm sure it was a cute place at some point but now it's just kitsch) and from there to a stay at a small winery. We hiked just outside of Bend and in an original forest along the route to Cheshire Oregon. Next stop was Eugene where I did glass art for dummies. Paper weight. But it's a gorgeous paper weight and it's mine and I had fun making it. Now back home in Vancouver. Normalcy appears to be returning. Home improvement project is coming to an end, as is my heart condition. Time to make some plans.... Photo credit: davidpwhelan at Morgue File We're at Lake Mead once more. Summer time at Lake Mead is unforgiving; temperatures as high as 45 degrees Celsius, which increases as summer goes by. I recently learned that the area host an incredible number of animals who have adapted to the harsh environment. There are numerous amphibians and reptiles, including the Gila Monster, different snakes, there are 19 species of bats, there are big horn sheep, mountain lions, many different fish in the lake, beavers, name it. They have adapted to the harsh environment and make it work. There is also a large population of Turkey Vultures (oddly not mentioned on Lake Mead National Park's website. And I looked up animals at Lake Mead because I wondered, what can here possibly live (and die) to support such a large population of Turkey Vultures? Well, a lot. I find these birds incredible. We have them in Canada, but I have only seen them in Squamish; here they are in abundance (madly protected thankfully; $15,000 US fine or 6 months in prison for taking one). They are gorgeous. Their wing span can be as wide as 6 feet, and they are masters at gliding the warm air, effortlessly looking from above, or more, smelling from above for their next meal; they have an amazing nose (unusual for a bird) and they smell out their next meal, keeping the desert clean and free of rabies. They are so good at smelling out a meal that other vultures such as Black Vultures join them for guidance toward the next go-to place. This very early morning, one last swim in Lake Mead, and there were these four youngsters to welcome me to the shore. Turkey Vultures lower their body temperatures at night (to just over 1 degree Celsius) to preserve energy, so they are hypothermic when they wake up. They sat there quietly throughout my swim, and I speculated that they were warming up a little before disappearing into the skies, riding those thermals again. |